Some final thoughts about "Carmen" and the young woman who stepped in on 24 hours' notice to save the show.

In person, Hannah Sharene Penn, 28, is adorable, funny, fast-talking and more beautiful than her Carmen wig suggested. Last Wednesday, her day off, she was shopping in the Pearl when she got the call to replace Jossie Perez.

"I dropped to the curb," she said.

Are you ready? Chris Mattaliano, company director, asked.

"Yes," she said without hesitating.

The next day was a blur of rehearsals, dialogue coaching and costume fittings. The shoes never did fit.

Backstage, in the final minutes before going on, people crowded into her dressing room. "I had a wild look in my eyes," so when Mattaliano arrived, he pulled her into the hall and put his hands on her shoulders.

Two things will keep the curtain up, he told her: Sing well and act like Carmen. By then, she wasn't nervous, but "in the zone."

"It was an out-of-body experience," she recalls, watching herself perform. Robert Ainsley, chorusmaster, spent the first act on his knees just offstage, calling cues for her dialogue, but Penn couldn't hear him. When the curtain came down on Act 1, he was in tears for her, she said.

"It's fine, Robert, it's OK," she reassured him.

She had to improvise some action in Act 2 because as originally cast as Mercedes, she had never seen rehearsals of that part of the opera. Before going on with Mark Doss, the Escamillo, she told him she wanted him to walk her to her spot and squeeze her hand when she was in the right place. That worked OK, except that he sang so loudly, she couldn't hear her own voice and discovered at one point that she was singing flat.

Her shoes gave her the only real trouble of the night. They were too big and as she began to dance for Don Jose (Richard Troxell), she began to fall out of them, so she just went over and sat on his lap.

She also received a few bruises on her arms when Troxell grabbed her in excitement.

Penn paced herself in order to have something for Act 4. By the end of Act 2, she knew she was over the hurdle and could let go a bit more. The hardest parts were the ensembles, like the quintet, because the music flies by and Mercedes and Carmen's music is in close harmony (thirds). As Carmen, Penn had no trouble, but when she went back to singing Mercedes on Saturday, she slipped into Carmen's music at one point, receiving a good-natured glance from Perez.

After the curtain fell, Thursday, and her colleagues erupted, Penn went to the opening-night party, but drank only a bit of wine and left after 30 minutes. She didn't know if she would sing again on Saturday, so she wanted to rest.

Perez did indeed sing Saturday, after which Penn and friends relaxed at Lucky Lab and Horse Brass Pub.

This wasn't the first time she'd gone on with little notice. At Glimmerglass, she was spending the night at home in pajamas when the Rosina in "Barber of Seville" canceled. Penn had 10 minutes to get to the hall, so someone drove her at 90 mph while she was still in her pajamas. The director told her she had 30 seconds to memorize where her props were. She looked around the stage while someone literally counted out loud.

Preparation is key to covering a role, she said. Last Christmas, when she learned she had won a place in the studio artists program, Mattaliano told her she would be covering Carmen. By the time she arrived in Portland last summer, she had memorized the role. Another help was that she sang Carmen's arias many times in previews around the community this fall.

Now, she's moving on to Cenerentola (Nov. 2) which she is covering for Angela Niederloh. By the first rehearsal, she will have the part memorized.